Show Pile

I remember CESs of long agothat's about five to ten years, an eternity in CES time when all of the literature handed out was in print form. Now it's typically on a flash drive, a disc (and even they are getting thinner on the ground—particularly the tiny ones that can't be used on Mac computers) or a simple card with directions to a news-release website. But not always; there's still a pile of paper to deal with, like the 6-inch stack I brought home with me. Luckily I drive to the show.

One of the realities of blogging at CES is that we here at Home Theater cover the video news first, which means that most of the video-related entries end up at the bottom of the blog pile, with the later, heavily audio-related entries at the top. That's why the blogs here are front-loaded with audio. Much of the serious high-end audio is at the Venetian Hotel, well removed from the of the circus atmosphere at the Las Vegas Convention Center where just about everything else, including the video, resides.

You may see a lot of audio entries below and wonder why? Well, for my part, I can't escape my roots of a dozen years or more writing the Stereophile. But more importantly for our present purposes, speakers are speakers, and I spent most of my time at the Venetian scoping them out. While many speakers that you'll see here will be inappropriate for home theater, largely because their manufacturers don't see fit to make matching center channel speakers for them, the technology involved is still fascinating. To me, anyway.

Most manufacturers tend to trot out their most expensive models for CES demos, but sure, there was affordable stuff. At the Venetian I paid closest attention to loudspeakers. For example, I was impressed by what I heard from the Atlantic H-PAS designs, the new Revel Performa range, GoldenEar and the PSB Imagine T2. The most expensive of these were the largest Revel Performa floorstander at $4500/pair (most of the new Performa range is much less), and the PSB at $3500. Time did not permit me to check out all of the rooms, so I may well have missed other worthy entries.